Julie Bishop defends Peter Dutton’s calling of refugees ‘illiterate’

Julie Bishop has defended Immigration Minister Peter Dutton when he claimed that “illiterate” asylum seekers would steal Australian jobs. The Foreign minister said Dutton was just making a “self-evident” point.

Dutton came under fire for the comments he made on Sky News on Tuesday evening, calling refugees illiterate who would take over Australian jobs.

“For many people … they won’t be numerate or literate in their own language, let alone English,” Dutton said.

“These people would be taking Australian jobs, there’s no question about that. For many of them, they would be unemployed. They would languish in unemployment queues and on Medicare and the rest of it, so there would be huge cost and there’s no sense in sugar-coating that. That’s the scenario.”

The minister also claimed the Greens “were very close to the CFMEU” (Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union), while Labor has “obviously well-known” relationship with the union movement.

A Labor spokesman said Dutton should apologise immediately for his “half-baked” and “deeply offensive” remarks, while Greens Immigration rep Sarah Hanson-Young said Dutton used scare-mongering on refugees to hide Liberal’s “xenophobia.”

Bishop, on the other hand, sided with her fellow Liberal, saying, “Let’s have a reality check here.”

She told Sky News, “Often the people who come to Australia on these visas are from very troubled backgrounds, particularly from Afghanistan but also Pakistan and beyond. And there is an extremely high cost involved in ensuring they can be a contributing member of society.”

The Foreign minister claimed that Greens never consider the budget and the cost of taking in refugees. Dutton, she pointed out, only talked about the “very real cost” of settling refugees in Australia.

When asked to comment on Dutton’s calling for refugees innumerate and illiterate, Bishop said there would also be considerable cost of teaching asylum seekers the English language, and this would be shouldered by the Australian public. She clarified Dutton’s remarks on refugees apparently taking over Australian jobs as well, explaining that when refugees settle in the country, Australians would want them to be contributing members of the society and not rely on welfare.